Auschwitz on Genn Beck itinerary

Controversial pundit Glenn Beck, best-known graduate of Bellingham’s Sehome High School, plans to visit Auschwitz later this year and broadcast from the Polish town of Oswiecim near the Nazi death camp site.

Beck had ex-Sen. Rick Santorum as guest on his radio show Thursday, and told the Republican presidential hopeful:

“I’m going over to Poland in a couple of weeks on something that’s a venture that I’m doing. I am not doing a special on Auschwitz per se — I’m visiting Auschwitz, but I’m talking about the town which is just a few miles outside of the gate.”

Beck has enjoyed a bumpy ride with some American Jews, although retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., has promised to attend Beck’s “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem later this summer.

Beck has subjected billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros, a Jew who survived the Holocaust in Hungary, to ceaseless vituperation and abuse.

Beck once talked about Soros’ boyhood when “as a 14 year old he had to help the government confiscate the lands of his fellow Jewish friends and neighbors . . . who were being sent to the gas chambers.”

The smearing of Soros provoked outrage from Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

“Glenn Beck’s description of George Soros’ actions during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top for a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say — inaccurately — that there’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps.”

The two crossed swords again when Beck likened rabbis of Reform Judaism to radical Islamists, saying:

“It’s almost like Islam . . . radicalized Islam in a way. Radical Islam is less about religion that it is about politics. When you look at Reform Judaism, it is more about politics.”

Foxman hit back at Beck’s “bigoted ignorance, and declared: “Despite his feeble attempt to suggest that he was not equating Reform Judaism with Islamic extremist terrorism, the simple fact that he would mention them in the same breath is highly offensive and outrageous. ”

“Glenn Beck has no business discounting the faith of any people, and he should think twice before commenting on something he knows nothing about.”

Beck said the intent of his broadcast from Poland is to help him “figure out” what happened at the Nazi extermination camp and “how did this happen?”

“Poland, I didn’t know this when I first started doing my research,” said Beck. “Poland rose up, a lot of Poles rose up, to try to help the Jews but they had nothing left. They had no arms.”

Actually, there were two uprisings in Poland during World War II.

When Nazi SS troops arrived to clear the Warsaw Ghetto early in 1943 — those who had not died already were to be sent to extermination camps — Jews resisted for several weeks using smuggled arms.

The Polish government-in-exile staged a larger Warsaw uprising in the fall of 1944, after Soviet troops had arrived near the outskirts of the Polish capital. The uprising was crushed by German troops as the Soviets made no move to intervene.

Some anti-Jewish riots broke out in Polish cities after World War II as surviving Jews — there were not many — sought to return to their homes.